December 17, 2008

The Kirkman/Bendis Debates: Let’s Do the Math
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on November 25, 2008
by Todd Allen

Over the summer you might have stumbled onto Robert Kirkman’s plea for comics creators to leave DC and Marvel behind for independent publishing (or to come to Image, if you read it with a cynical view). You may also have heard that Brian Bendis attempted to call BS on Kirkman’s plea and debated him on the topic.

While the debate didn’t have a clear winner, the stances were clear: Kirkman wishes more creators at DC and Marvel realized how much money they could make by going independent. Bendis thinks Kirkman’s sales are too high to be a reasonable example, finds his Marvel deal (including a page rate, royalties and placing Powers at Icon) preferable and kept talking about the value of trade paperback reprints.

Unfortunately, nobody really got into the numbers of the situation, despite reports of Kirkman having some charts on hand. Fortunately for you, I don’t fear math, so let’s find out what you could reasonably expect to make as a comic creator under the Image deal.

Roll them up.
This follow up story originally appeared in PVP Online on November 27th, 2008
by Scott Kurtz

So, let’s get to first things first: Are Todd’s numbers right for PvP? Yes. PvP sells on average around 3k a month. It breaks even and makes anywhere from 300-500 bucks for me per issue. So to categorize the monthly title as “making beer money” is pretty accurate. Used to be a lot more but I’ve done a lot to ruin that profit margin. Here are some tips for those of you who want to make your own monthly titles.